Consumerism and the Art of Denial - Part 1: The Echo Chamber

My book is titled One Above and Seven Below and has a subtitle: A Consumer’s guide to Orthodox Judaism from the Perspective of the Chareidim.

This subtitle reveals the mindset that I have been battling ever since I took on this project. It is the plague that infects what can be termed as the “left wing” of Orthodox Jewry. The plague of “Consumerism”.  My primary goal in writing my book and my blog is to improve people’s lives by helping them combat this frightful plague.

In my book, I listed about six “hazards” to which consumers are vulnerable. There is no need to review the entire list, but two of them have been very dominant throughout my analysis of the Malka Leifer episode. They are:

·         A consumer [of Judaism] allows Western norms and philosophies to shape his/her thought process instead of the philosophies of our Talmudic sages. So much so that they are totally oblivious that the Talmudic sages – and the Rabbanim and poskim throughout the generations – think differently.

·         A consumer tends to view the more Halachic minded sector as a separate nation that they have nothing to do with.

The first hazard is way more important and is actually the instigator of the second one. I emphasized this first hazard as the reason why I needed to write a preamble post to my initial post about Mrs. Leifer. The post was very aptly titled Thinking Like a Jew. Its purpose was to list and describe the Talmudic principles that compel us Halachic-minded people to think differently and to advise the masses to learn how to think as Chazal teach us. This is for everybody’s benefit.

Alas, consumerism is a very tough opponent. Along with the hazards come the usual symptoms. And these symptoms are all but impossible to cure.

At the top of the list is Tunnel Vision. Tunnel Vision is a blindness to everything except what one wants to look at. He or she can see nothing else. This is what the Tochacha in Parshat Ki Tavo calls “ivaron” – blindness. This is accompanied by denial. When one is in denial of reality, he or she becomes irrational. This is what the Tochahca calls “shigaon” – irrationality. Hence the consumer is left with “timhon levav” – cluelessness.

The Timhon Levav is the saddest part. It’s a dementia to a point that the patient doesn’t know he/she is unwell. He/she is in total denial. There is no way to talk to him or her. To reach them. They can’t see you or hear you. They only hear themselves. They are in an echo chamber.

The only cure for this malady is “ameilus b’Torah”. This is what our sages tell us at the Tochacha in Parshat Bechukosai. But only the chareidi world prioritizes ameilus b’Torah. The irreligious, the democrats, and even the religious left all suffer from these horrific symptoms because they are not connected to ameilus b’Torah.

Such is consumerism.

My agenda with One Above and Seven Below is to prescribe the cure for consumerism, for it is rampant among us. And my agenda with my posts about Mrs. Leifer is to point out how much it is driving this debacle.

Amazingly, between 16 and 17 thousand people supported the two petitions advocating Western style justice (intentional double entendre). Most of them are Jewish and many of those are shomrei mitzvos.

All consumers.

Likewise, Dassi Erlich’s #BringLeiferBack Facebook page has, to date, accumulated 3,552 people who “like this Page”. 3,552 [mostly] Jewish consumers!

Of course, I find this very distressing. So many of my fellow Jews! It hurts. But there is not much I can do. A consumer/leftist/democrat/atheist cannot be cured unless they want to be. But they first need to acknowledge that they are consumers (leftists, etc.). And before that, they need to know that there is such a condition. But when one lives in a soundproof cocoon where they surround themselves by people who only tell them what they want to hear, there is no getting through.

At the head of all this is Dassi Erlich, the queen of the hive. It is her “honey” that is attracting this swarm. Consumerism is very contagious.

The Malka Leifer affair is progressing the way a rational person should expect it to progress. The Sapper sisters are accusing, pursuing, persecuting, and prosecuting another person. The accused-pursued-persecuted-prosecuted individual is resisting and fighting back.

It doesn’t matter how true the accusations may be. This is how people behave. Accused people do not just “turn themselves in” and let themselves be prosecuted unless this course of action holds some personal benefit for them. They are not in any hurry for “results” and they are not interested in making anything easier for their accusers-pursuers. And if “the system” contains essential safeguards which can be exploited to delay this persecution, they will make the most of them.

This is natural and is to be expected in the real world by realistic people.

So, as I check the comments on Dassi Erlich’s perpetual Facebook posts and see Dassi and her supporters unanimously whining that the accused is not cooperating with their persecutors, and is taking advantage of the benefits of “due process”, I see a homogeneous crowd of consumers who suffer from the tunnel vision, denial and dementia that come with it. Out of touch.

In my opinion, Dassi’s Facebook page is one big tunnel. It is a forum for supporters but not a forum for open debate. Any dissenters get blocked. I know this first-hand. All of the voices repeat the same thing – how amazing these righteous sisters are, how they are saving the world, how irredeemably wicked is the accused as well as anybody who stands up for her, and how corrupt is the system. The great echo chamber.

Some of these consumers are even so pious as to invoke the Name of G-d as if G-d really wants Israeli Jewish miscreants – real or imagined – to be extradited to goyim in Australia. They are actually “davening to Hashem” that Hashem should allow the Jewish nation to do what He clearly prohibits in his Torah and Shulchan Aruch.

The brashest display of consumerism that Dassi and her sisters display, is when they denigrate and vilify the non-consumers – those that acquired the clarity that comes with ameilus b’Torah. The consumers cannot fathom the clear thinking so all they can do is try to bring the ameilei Torah down to their level. And they incite all their supporters to follow suit.

As Rabbi Akiva said about his years as a consumer: “I would say, ‘Who can bring me a scholar and I will bite him like an ass!’”

Anybody from the One Above, ameilus b’torah camp is going to think differently than the consumers and, as such, anyone from this camp is a target. I have gotten my fair share and later it was Rav Yitzchok Dovid Grossman. More recently, it was Rav Yaakov Litzman. But the one that inspired this post, is their encounter with Harav Mendel Shafran, Shlita. This episode is recounted in Dassi’s Facebook post from March 10, 2019. (Sorry, my inspirations take a while to come to fruition.)

Dassi and her sisters just happened to be visiting Eretz Yisroel to celebrate more of the shameful extradition hearings that they feel will save the children of the world. A renowned Talmid Chacham, HRHG Menachem Mendel Shafran, about 72 years old, attended the hearing and offered to take responsibility for Mrs. Leifer is she is released to house arrest.

The Sapper sisters and all those saintly child abuse advocates were clearly aggravated by this show of compassion. It goes without saying that Mrs. Leifer is not entitled to any. So they decided to go all the way to Bnei Brak to have a face to face meeting with Rabbi Shafran. I think it is a safe assumption that Rabbi Shafran did not call this meeting and it was the initiative of the Sapper sisters.

Needless to say, these sisters did not come away from the meeting with a sense of accomplishment. In fact, Dassi writes: “we were so deeply pained after leaving this encounter with him”. And this begs the question:

What in Heaven’s name were they trying to accomplish? What were they expecting??

To qualify this question, let me remind my readers, new and old, that I have been writing about this episode for close to three years. I began with Thinking Like a Jew to present the Halachic foundation and I went on to apply these Halachic principles to this case. These Halachic principles are found in Shas and poskim and anybody who is an ameil b’Torah and is familiar with the Shas and poskim should undoubtedly reach the same conclusions. The Sapper sisters and the Child Abuse Advocates are all quite aware of what I have written. I am sure of that.

Moreover, in June of 2017 I expressly wrote (Flirting with Danger):   

This episode does not seem to be on the radar screen of the Eidah or Gur and Vizhnitz.  so we haven't heard from them. Why? Because it hasn’t reached a critical point…But, if this thing isn’t dropped, it will…The Eidah and Gur will not support this mesira; especially if it is perpetrated by the “medinah”. Trust me on this. I do not stand alone.

So, more than two years ago, I proclaimed that Gur will not support this mesirah. They all know I wrote this. Yet, a short time later, they saw that Rabbi Grossman wanted to help Mrs. Leifer – and the consumers were in shock! Then, on their previous visit, Rav Litzman told them that he will not support this mesira – and the consumers were in shock! And now Rabbi Shafran tells them that he does not support this mesira – and the consumers are in shock!

What were they thinking?

I should be shocked, but I am not. I have known consumers my whole life and that is why I decided to write a book to try to help them become a little more shock resistant. But, as I wrote, there is no getting through to tunnel vision sufferers who live in an echo chamber.

And when they cannot avoid seeing or hearing, they live in a state of denial.

The people who can, avoid my posts. The irreligious or non-Jews can ignore me. But the few who claim to be observant are quite stuck. Because Rambam and Shulchan Aruch and Chofetz Chaim and even Rav Elyashiv say exactly what I say they said. So I get people who profess to be Torah observant Jews and pretend to be Rabbis say the Halacha I present is “misguided”, “misapplied” and “pseudo-Halachic”. Even when it is quoted verbatim.

Denial.

And when other folks who are as learned as I am (and more, although perhaps not as articulate and outspoken) take the same position, they are just as misguided. The consumers all know better!

Denial.

So now, let’s have a look at Dassi Erlich’s Facebook post from March 10, 2019 and we can see how far reaching this plague really is.

As I often do, I will first reprint the entire post and then analyze it in segments. Here goes:

This past Friday we met with Rabbi Shafran in Bnei Braq to discuss why he was publicly supporting Leifer by asking the court to release her under his care.

Our meeting was right out of the text book I am studying regarding abusive arguments. I now understand why we were so deeply pained after leaving this encounter with him.
In my Post Grad Degree in Domestic Violence I am learning that abusive arguments usually have the following four characteristics:

1- Denial in refusing to believe us. "I did not say I believe you, I will not say I believe you. I will not come to court to support you. I will not take sides".

2 - Excusing of ones beliefs." Leifer taught my two daughters and nothing ever happened to them".

3- Minimisation of ones worth as a Survivor.
"You were abused already, somebody else hurt you".

4-Justification. Writing a letter to the Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and turning up at court to support Leifers bail, "It's my duty as a rabbi to support a fellow Jew".

When asked why Leifer's Jewishness deserved his sympathy over our own??

He refused to answer us.

He did explain the importance of supporting the abuser because he saw them as the underdog.

I looked at him incredulously and asked him if he had ever been to court when an Ultra Orthodox predator was the accused. On which sides was the court swollen with supporters?

Again he refused to respond.

Rav Shafran is heralded as the Rabbi who instructs complainants to report to the police. He shared an example of a woman who called him up recently. "Go to the police", he told them, "know though your children will expelled from school, you will be barred from your synagogue and you life will be ruined".

Imagine how hard it is for survivors of abuse in his community to speak up. This man is considered a standard bearer on these issues. What hope do these people have?

So Dassi is setting out to tell us about her encounter with Rabbi Shafran which, evidently, pained her deeply. As we will see, her words are somewhat incoherent. In addition, there are some general points that we must keep in mind throughout her post. Mainly, we are only hearing her presentation of the conversation.

·       She does not tell us how long the meeting lasted and what amount of it is being told over.

·       We cannot be certain if she is verbatim, if she is not distorting some of it, adding words or phrases or leaving some important ones out.

·       In the course of her post she puts things in quotes. We cannot tell if these are exact quotes from Rabbi Shafran or common lines that she has heard from other people in the course of her copious meetings and is attributing them to Rabbi Shafran even if he himself didn’t say them.

·       When she says “he didn’t respond”, we cannot be sure if he really not respond at all, or she does not want to acknowledge his response. 

Basically, Dassi is showing us what she wants us to see. We don’t really know how the conversation went. One thing is clear, Dassi does not seem to have a positive opinion about Rabbi Shafran nor much respect for him. And she wants to make sure that her readers and supporters share her disdain.

Based on the Likes and comments, she is tremendously successful. As many say, she is an amazing woman and an inspiration for us all. What they say about Rabbi Shafran (and Rabbi Grossman and Rabbi Litzman and, of course, me) cannot be reprinted.

But when we look a little deeper into her post, we see the ivaron (tunnel vision), shigaon (irrationality and denial), and timhon levav (cluelessness) that personifies a bona fide consumer.

I have it all written up but it is quite a bit winded, and we all have to make Shabbos and Pesach (Sheh”i-Peh”i), so I will cut it short here and continue in the following post.

To be continued...